The High Cost of a Car Culture
October 23rd, 2006,And then there are the economic costs imposed by a car-dominated culture. Here are some quotes from an October 12 Star Tribune article on a study that looked at this issue:
People at the lower end of the income scale in the car-dominated Twin Cities area are being forced to spend more to get to work than they do for their apartments or mortgages, according to a new national study.
But the situation is even worse in plenty of other cities around the country, researchers report. And that may be the study’s biggest surprise in a region accustomed to hearing itself depicted as a snowbound Atlanta — all cars and highways and not too many other ways to get around.
The study, released Wednesday by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Housing Policy, is the latest to attack the idea that families with modest incomes can save money by fleeing to the outer rings of metro areas in a quest for affordable homes…
The research focuses on families with household incomes between $20,000 and $50,000. In 17 of the 28 metro areas examined, including the Twin Cities, those families pay more for transportation (30 percent of what they earn) than housing (27 percent).
The total of the two, 57 percent, is the same as the average for all of those metro areas.
For the record, the cities with the highest rates of driving to work (for the income group mentioned above) are Kansas City, Tampa, and Dallas (93%); those same cities have the lowest use of public transit (2%). The Twin Cities have an 85% rate for driving to work, while 7% use public transit and 4% walk or bike. New York has the highest rates of use of public transit at 31% and walking and biking at 8%. The Twin Cities rank 8th out of the 28 large metro areas for percentage of people who walk or bike - that despite the climate here. Again, these rates are for low- and moderate-income people.
The full report, “A Heavy Load: The Combined Housing and Transportation Burdens of Working Families,” is available through the Center for Housing Policy.
October 23rd, 2006 at 2:14 pm
And another report on this topic (with Minnesota metro examples) is from the Brookings Institute called The Affordability Index: A new tool for measuring the true affordability of a housing choice at http://www.brookings.edu/metro/umi/20060127_affindex.pdf
For a city like Northfield which has become more of a commuter location, how much are people willing to pay to live here and work somewhere else? And what will be the cost to all of us for that choice in terms of road congestion, pollution, etc.
October 23rd, 2006 at 4:53 pm
Betsey wrote:
Excellent points Betsey.
I hope and pray more and more companies embrace telecommuting. I commuted from Northfield to the Twin Cities for more than 5 years, and eventually, I had enough. I resigned, and accepted a position that allows me to telecommute - right here from good old Northfield.
But there (in my opinion) not enough opportunities like that. Think about it, everyone wins. The employee uses less gasoline (green!), saves money (more “green”!), is more productive, etc. The employer saves energy costs too (even more green!), and gets their money’s worth, with a happy, productive employee, who spews less gasses into the air.
October 24th, 2006 at 6:37 am
Betsey, Thanks for the link to the Brookings report.
Chip, I salute you for your telecommuting choice! When I worked in corporate America several years ago, I saw the telecommuting option (such as telecommuting one day a week) being eroded by management, which puzzled me. It would be good to see corporate leadership on that issue.
Regarding both your comments: I conclude that property values must be directly related to the distance required to travel to job opportunities in an area. If those opportunities are far away, transportation costs are higher, and people will have less money to pay for housing, so housing costs will likely be lower. Thus it stands to reason that Northfield property values will be higher if more people have shorter commutes - including the very short telecommute.